Of Mice and Multimedia

When Bill Moggridge bought a digital watch for his son in 1983, it took him “20 minutes of concentrated effort” to set the alarm so his boy wouldn’t miss his paper route. Then daylight savings time came and the younger Moggridge gave up his early mornings. Dad was enlisted to cancel the alarm and reset the time, but of course the instructions were long gone. You’d think Moggridge, who designed the first-ever laptop computer in 1980 (the GRiD Compass ), would be able to figure out how to reset the time on a dinky watch with only four buttons. You’d be wrong.

Today Moggridge, who has since founded the influential Silicon Valley-based design firm IDEO, holds the watch up as an unshining example of bad industrial design. In his new book, “Designing Interactions,” Moggridge conducts 40 interviews with industry pioneers who do the job right. Ever wonder why Google is the dominant search engine or how the mouse on your desktop came into being? This accessible book endeavors to answer those questions and more. Moggridge recently spoke with NEWSWEEK’s Brian Braiker. Excerpts:

Bill Moggridge: I’m afraid I’ve picked up a cold so please forgive me if I’m slow of wit.

NEWSWEEK: I am sure slow of wit for you is still light years ahead of us. What is interaction design?

I think it’s really the design of everything that includes electronic technology. That is the broad definition, which the book encompasses. There is a narrower one, which is where I came to it from, which is more like a design discipline.

You’re talking about designing user interfaces?